Sunday, December 23, 2007

Stefan Kienberger (Z_GIS) has successfully conducted a field trip to Mozambique within his PhD research to assess vulnerability to natural hazards (floods & droughts). Major objectives have been the identification of risk zones and additional geographic features with VHR-satellite images, identification of vulnerability factors (both through a participatory approach) and expert interviews. The results will be applied to model vulnerability on the district and community levels in Búzi, Mozambique through the integration of different datasets (census, Remote Sensing; weighting of indicators, ...).The research is funded through Munich Re Foundation.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Dr. Euro Beinat has been selected for the new endowed chair in 'Geoinformatics - Location Based Services' at Salzburg University. Starting from Jan 1, Prof. Beinat will be assigned to the Centre for Geoinformatics as well as to the Department of Geography and Geology and will offer classes and thesis supervision in LBS. The June 2008 summer school in LBS will be one of next year's highlights. Prof. Beinat's research is focussed on realtime location awareness, development of location based systems for highly dynamic and critical environments, and a social science perspective on dynamic cities. Current research initiatives are jointly implemented together with the SENSEable City Lab at MIT Boston and the SPINlab at VU Amsterdam.